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Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days. So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place. So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more. –“Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid,” Jeremy Clarkson, TimesOnline(via)

Microsoft is on its way to becoming a dominant brand in Africa, mainly through the deals made with various governments. “We are very conscious of the environment in which we do business, where our employees and customers live, we always try to empower those communities,” said Dr Diarra. “Africa is really the last frontier in not only developing technology that is specific to people’s needs, but eventually even developing new business models that will enable the emergence of local software industries, such as young people who have the skills to be able to write their own applications for their own community,” he said. –“The hi-tech battle for Africa,” Alka Marwaha, BBC World Service

“He could be one of a million beach-bound, black-socked Florida retirees, not the man who, by some odd happenstance of life, possesses the brain of Albert Einstein — literally cut it out of the dead scientist's head.”